• Track the “current use” tax policy discussions in the Vermont Legislature. The policy allows farmers to pay property taxes on land based on agricultural and forestry use — not on the land’s potential for development.

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This month marks 20 years that I’ve been working with farmers in Vermont, and it’s been an honor. This state has innovative, generous and thoughtful farmers, as well as a public affection and respect for agriculture that distinguishes us from many other places.

I’m lucky to work for University of Vermont Extension, an organization devoted to helping people better their lives with useful information. Of course, I’m well aware that I get to give agricultural advice without having to take the risks or do the hard farm work.

There still are plenty of challenges, given how complicated farming has become: a food system that must cope with consumer trends, pests, volatile weather, energy costs, nutrient management, labor and abundant regulation.

In Extension, we deal with farms selling commodities such as fluid milk, to those making direct sales at roadside stands. We talk to full-time, seventh-generation farm families and to part-time wannabe new farmers, plus everyone in between. We deliver programs for large farms with dozens of employees and many hundreds of acres, and for small farms with a person or two working a handful of acres.

The bottom line to our approach is that Vermont needs all its farms, and all the farmers we can get — for economic, environmental, cultural and food-security reasons. And the good news is that opportunities abound to keep agriculture alive and kicking.

For one thing, we are not losing farms overall. The U.S. Census of Agriculture says so. In 1974, Vermont had just less than 6,000 farms; in 2007, we had almost 7,000.

True, many of them are small and part-time, but larger farms don’t drop out of thin air — they need to start someplace. The really big change during that period of time is that in the 1970’s, roughly three-quarters of our farms were dairies. Now, more than three-quarters of our farms produce something else. In other words, several thousand new farm enterprises started up in little more than a generation.

With advances in management and technology, the remaining dairy farms produce as much milk as ever.

Sadly, dairy farms have been penalized by a dysfunctional commodity system that now pays them roughly the same prices they received two decades ago. That’s a crime, given how hard dairy farmers have worked to improve efficiency and environmental stewardship. New England needs these farms, because it is a net importer of milk.

The fact that a thousand Vermont dairies are still in business is a testimony to their owners’ skills. Given a fair price, they will prosper. Dairy still dominates Vermont’s agricultural economy and landscape, so it’s essential the milk-pricing system is reformed, and soon.

While dairy farms have consolidated, new farms have brought unprecedented diversity to Vermont and the Northeast. Markets for their products have emerged, too, and are growing.

A generation ago there was hardly any “organic” food; there were no CSAs (community supported agriculture); farmers markets were relatively few; “value-added” products, “localvores” and “farm-to-school” were not part of the lexicon.

Today, Vermont has more than 500 certified organic farms, more than 80 CSAs, 60 farmers markets, hundreds of farmstands, nearly 40 artisinal farmstead cheese makers, a dozen wineries and 100-plus schools that buy local food. There are endeavors such as agri-tourism, grass-fed beef, on-farm biodiesel production, winter vegetables growing in high tunnels and much, much more.

All this supports thousands of farm families, provides fresh and safe food to consumers and keeps local taxes down because cows don’t go to school, and tomatoes don’t dial 911.

Vermont is a national leader in per-capita direct-market sales from farms to consumers; percentage of farmland under organic management; and farmland protection through conservation easements.

And Vermont farms are economic engines.

The value of products as they are sold directly from farms is $674 million, but the indirect value of these products is an additional $2.5 billion, according to recent studies by the Vermont Sustainable Agriculture Council and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture.

That value is in the form of wages paid, feed, fuel, equipment and supplies purchased, and support for the farm-related food industry (think ice cream, cheese, yogurt, salsa, maple products, etc.).

Preliminary research by the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (part of the legislature’s Farm to Plate Initiative to craft a new strategic plan for agriculture) shows that food is big business in our state: 20 percent of private jobs and 31 percent of private business establishments involve food production, processing, distribution, sales or infrastructure.

The more we hook our farming up to our food system, the stronger both will be.

Vermont’s 1.2 million acres agriculture land also supports our multibillion-dollar tourism industry, albeit in ways that are hard to measure.

Farms are a key piece of Vermont’s remarkable landscape, which mixes open spaces, forests and villages to create visual feasts. They provide places to hike, snowmobile, hunt and fish, and they supply wildlife habitat and carbon sequestration.

As a bulwark against sprawl, farms help maintain small-town settlement patterns — an essential factor in participatory, local democracy.

In the age of twittering, default-swapping, strip-mall America, it’s a comfort to live in a place where something so authentic, truly productive and fundamentally honorable as farming remains on solid ground. But it will take an engaged citizenry to keep it there.